


Wish Upon A Shooting Star

by AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, re-post from 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 03:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17438927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell/pseuds/AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell
Summary: „Show me your badge, Lisbon, would you?“She looks unsure but obeys anyway and pulls it out from her jeans pocket. For a moment he’s completely dumbfound when he finds the familiar CBI badge in her hand.That’s impossible.„Jane? Are you alright? You’re freaking me out.“„You’re not working for the FBI?“„The FBI?“ she repeats incredulously. „Why would I work for the FBI?“





	Wish Upon A Shooting Star

**Author's Note:**

> And a BIG special thank you goes to the wonderful clairebare for beta reading!

**Wish Upon A Shooting Star**

**.**

**.**

At first there’s a constant beeping. A sound that makes Patrick Jane’s ears hurt.

He tries to open his eyes, tries to find out what it is and  _how to turn it off for god’s sake,_  but all he manages is a brief flicker of his eye lids.

There’s a familiar voice, softly whispering his name.

„Jane? Jane, can you hear me?“

_Lisbon._

He wants to tell her that  _yes,_  of course he can hear her, but the words won’t come.

There’s another voice, a voice he recognizes too.

„Mr. Jane, can you hear me? I’m Dr. Abbott. Mr. Jane?“

 _Dr. Abbott?_  He must have gotten that wrong.

Wait.

_A doctor?_

The beeping gets louder, a sudden pain pressing down on his chest and then there’s nothing.

Jane feels like he’s floating, faces coming in and out of view. Darkness turning to light, then dark again. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness, but he thinks that he must be in a hospital, the beeping from a monitor beside his bed.

Abbott and Pike are there too, wearing scrubs and a stethoscope around their necks and Jane’s sure he must have hurt his head pretty hard to imagine things like that.

Sometimes he sees Agent Fisher, she wears scrubs too, hers white instead of blue. And for some obscure reason she always carries a syringe when she comes into view, just seconds before his sight gets blurry again.

He sees Cho and Rigsby and Grace as well but none of them wear scrubs. Jane wonders where they left Maddy and Ben. Sometimes there’s Wylie, mopping the floor, music blaring from his headphones.

The person who’s with him most is Lisbon. Sometimes he only hears her voice, other times, she’s holding his hand. And when he manages to open his eyes long enough, she smiles back at him. Tells him to keep fighting, to wake up, to talk to her.

And he wants to, but every time he tries to speak, everything gets fuzzy again and he drifts back into the darkness.

When his sight finally stays clear for more than thirty seconds and he turns his head to his right, he finds her there, in a chair next to his hospital bed.

„Welcome back,“ she whispers with a smile. Her hair a lot longer than he remembers. Raven black curls falling into her pale face, her green eyes glistening with tears.

He blinks, allows his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the sunlight flooding the room. Thinks about what he wants to ask her first, takes his time to form the words in his head.

„What happened?“ he finally manages to get out. His throat feels so sore. His voice foreign in his ears.

„You had a car accident, Jane.“

He blinks again.  _A car accident?_

„What? With the Airstream?“

„The Airstream?“ Lisbon looks confused. „You don’t have an Airstream, Jane. At least not that I know of.“

Now it’s Jane’s turn to be confused.

_What is she talking about?_

„Do you want me to get Dr. Abbott?“

„Who?“

„Your doctor, Jane.“

„Don’t tell me he is Agent Abbott’s brother.“

„Who is Agent Abbott?“ she asks, frowning at him.

„Mr. Jane! It’s so nice to finally hear your voice!“

Jane blinks at the interruption and spots a woman who looks exactly like Agent Fisher, in white scrubs.

„How are you feeling, Mr. Jane?“ she asks him while she comes to a stop beside his bed to check his vitals.

Jane blinks irritated while he stares the name tag on her shirt that tells him her name is Kim Fisher.

_This isn’t right._

„You’re a nurse?“ he blurts out.

The woman laughs. „I hope so, otherwise I would get myself into a lot of trouble with your CBI friends here.“

„CBI?“ Jane looks back at Lisbon, who looks even more worried than she did before.

„You’re a consultant,“ she tells him. „You work for the CBI. You remember that right?“

Jane looks back at the nurse, wonders if this is some kind of joke. Wonders if there’s a camera hidden somewhere.

„I’ll get Dr. Abbott,“ Fisher says to no one in particular, before she leaves.

Jane starts to feel dizzy.

„Show me your badge, Lisbon, would you?“

She looks unsure but obeys anyway and pulls it out from her jeans pocket. For a moment he’s completely dumbfound when he finds the familiar CBI badge in her hand.

_That’s impossible._

„Jane? Are you alright? You’re freaking me out.“

„You’re not working for the FBI?“

„The FBI?“ she repeats incredulously. „Why would I work for the FBI?“

He’s fairly sure there is something wrong by now, but he insists. „We both do. You and me, and Cho and Fisher, Abbott and Wylie. Even Pike.“

„Alright Jane,“ Lisbon mutters, squeezing his hand for a second, „maybe it’s best we wait for your doctor, you’ve been out for a long time and I don’t know…“

He cuts her off, a sinking feeling in his stomach. „What do you mean,  _out for a long time?_ „

„You don’t remember anything?“

„The last thing I remember was you telling me you wanted to move to DC with Agent Pike,“ he replies slowly, watching her eyes narrowing in confusion with every word he says.

„Are you talking about your doctor?“

„No, Lisbon, I’m talking about the FBI agent you’re dating.“

He watches her raise her brows, before she rubs her right temple as if she’s about to get a migraine. When she finally starts to talk again, her voice is gentle as if she’s talking to a child.

„We were out there in the desert, trying to get Red John. You were meeting with him and Lorelei and we were about to get to you, but Agent Darcy got us first and when I finally found you, you were already hit by a car. By the driver of the limousine.“

Trying to shake off the memory of the hot wind in his face, he snarls: „That was almost four years ago, Lisbon. This isn’t funny.“

„No, Jane,“ she says. „That was a year ago.“

„A year? That doesn’t make any sense,“ he stammers. Feels his whole body start to tremble.

_That can’t be true._

Lisbon looks at him intently and explains very quietly: „You were in a coma, Jane. A week ago you started to wake up.“

„No, no, no, Lisbon. We got Lorelei and we got a list, I had ten suspects and we got Red John and I …“

„Lorelei Martins is dead, Jane.“

„I know! Red John killed her when…“

„No, he didn’t. She got shot when Agent Darcy and her team tried to stop the car. So did the driver and Agent Wainwright. Red John wasn’t even there. He tricked us.“

Jane stares at Lisbon. Wonders if she’s lost her mind.

„Where are we, Lisbon?“

„In a hospital,“ she answers, clearly at loss.

„No, where are we? What town?“

„We’re in Sacramento, Jane. Where we’ve always been.“

„We’re not in Texas?“

„Texas? Jane, I’ve never been to Texas in my life.“ Lisbon sounds shaken.

„Have you ever heard of Cannon River?“

„Cannon what?“

„Never mind.“

Jane stares down at the sheets, at his pale hands and back at Lisbon.

„Red John isn’t dead, is he?“ His voice sounds hollow.

„No, Jane.“ She looks sad and tired. „We still don’t have him. I’m trying to get the case back from the FBI, but as far as I know they don’t have a lead, either.“

„Do you think it could be McAllister?“

„Sheriff McAllister? Well, I doubt that but I can…“

„No,“ Jane grabs her arm, sudden panic flooding his brain. „No, Lisbon. Don’t.“

She looks puzzled, her eyes on his hand around her wrist and he has to fight the urge to hold on to her. Draws back his hand instead.

„Do you think Red John could be McAllister, Jane?“ Lisbon eyes him carefully and Jane has no idea what to tell her anymore.

„He was,“ he whispers in the end. Unsure if it’s true. „He told me. And then I killed him, I choked him to death with my bare hands and then I fled the country and left you behind.“

He stares at the wall.

„I didn’t even get the chance to tell you goodbye in person.“ He feels tears well up in his eyes, remembers that day like it was yesterday. Remembers the emptiness, the pain when he realized it hadn’t changed anything.

And now she tells him it never happened?

_How was that possible?_

A deep voice makes him look up again.

„How are you feeling, Mr. Jane?“

He finds Agent Abbott in the doorframe. He wears blue scrubs instead of his black suit, looks down at a chart in his hands and Jane wonders once more whether  _this_  is a dream.

„He’s a little confused,“ Lisbon answers before he finds the right words to do it himself. „He thought you were an FBI Agent.“

Abbott raises his brows, without looking up from the chart in his hands. „FBI, huh? Always wanted to have one of those fancy black SUV’s.“

Lisbon chuckles and Jane watches Abbott come closer, before he takes a look into his eyes with a little flash light from his shirt pocket.

„Everything looks fine,“ he starts. „But I’ll order another CT Scan just to make sure. Being a little confused is normal, like I told you most coma patients can hear everything that’s happening around them and often they get details confused.“

„It took us a week to get him to talk. Maybe he just needs a little more time to adjust.“

He keeps talking and Jane tries to follow, but all he can think about is that Red John isn’t dead.  _That he never killed him._

That Agent Abbott isn’t an Agent at all. That he’d never been in Texas, never worked for the FBI. That he never had a list of suspects, that they never got Lorelei Martins to begin with.

That these last years had been nothing but a strange dream. Some sort of hallucination. Nothing had been real.

„Are you still with me, Jane?“

He looks up, finds Abbott gone and Lisbon still sitting next to his bed.

„I think I had a really strange dream,“ he finally tells her.

„I figured,“ she looks at him with wide eyes and he can’t remember the last time she looked at him like that. The last time her eyes were as green and bright as they are right now.

_Full of hope and full of life._

„Care to share that dream with me?“ she asks him with a smile and with that he starts to talk. The words spill so easily, so fast they tumble together and he mixes up the time frame again and again, but Lisbon doesn’t seem to mind.

He tells her about his time on the island, about her working as a small town police officer in Cannon River and that she looked cute in that blue uniform. He tells her how he came back to the States, how he got Abbott to offer her a job too.

He tells her about his Airstream, about working for the FBI. About Rigsby’s and Grace’s wedding, their private agency and their daughter Maddy. He tells her about Bertram and the Blake Association, about his list of suspects, about McAllister being Red John, and about  _her_  dating Agent Pike.

He even tells her about the loss of his vest and that ridiculous button-down he was wearing all the time and that pair of socks he never seemed to change.

Lisbon listens and laughs, asking him something from time to time. Hands him a glass of water to sip, every time he takes a break to catch his breath. Plays with the zipper of her jacket, lost in her own thoughts.

When he’s told her everything he remembers he feels empty. Realizes most of it doesn’t make any sense.

_Why would the FBI agree to let him off the hook for killing a man?_

„Well, if it’s any comfort to you, Jane, if that Agent Pike was anything like Dr. Pike, than I can assure you I would never date a guy like that.“

She gives him a smile, a real and honest smile and Jane feels his heart beat just a little bit faster.

„But we should check out this list of suspects, I think that brings us a lot closer to…“

„No,“ Jane replies softly, shaking his head. „It’s not worth it.“

„What do you mean?“

Jane sighs. Looks out of the window and into the darkening sky.

„I always thought I would feel better if I got him, that it would change something. But it didn’t. If anything, it made me feel worse because there was no reason to go on any longer.“

He closes his eyes for a second before he looks back at her.

„When we get him, Lisbon, we’ll do it your way. I promise. I’ll let you arrest him. I swear I won’t interfere. I won’t trick you or leave you at the side of the road ever again.“

„You left me at the side of the road?“ she repeats, trying to sound angry but he can hear the laugh in her voice. She can probably just picture him doing that.

„I won’t do it again.“

„You better not.“

The death glare she gives him makes him chuckle.

_God, how much he missed this._

„But enough about me, tell me, Lisbon, what did you do this past year? You didn’t just watch me in my sleep, did you?“

He sees her blush.

„You did?“ he asks her disbelievingly.

„Yes, no,“ she stammers. Her cheeks flushed. „I mean Cho, Rigsby and Grace did, too. We didn’t want you to be alone when you woke up, so we made sure there was always someone with you.“

He watches her, the way she still plays with the zipper of her jacket. Wonders how many hours she spent here in this little room with him. Knows how much she hates hospitals.

„That was really kind of you,“ he tells her and makes her blush even more. He can’t help but think how pretty she looks.

He never thought he’d get the chance to see that side of her ever again. He’d thought he’d lost her forever. But yet, here she is.  _His_  Lisbon.

„I meant what I said, you know.“

Her eyes meet his and he stays quiet, returns her gaze bravely. Thinks that he got something most people don’t. A look into the future. The chance to change it.

He bends forward to take her hand into his own, holds it gently, his gaze never leaving her face.

„I love you, Teresa.“

For a moment she looks startled, then alarmed and then he watches as tears spill from her eyes. She tries to get up from her chair, tries to withdraw her hand from his but he just holds it even tighter.

„Don’t,“ he begs her. „I already lost you twice.“

She stills, green eyes finding blue and he thinks that this is all he needs.

_She is._

„Life is too short,“ he whispers, holding her hand in his own as he brushes away her tears with the other.

„When did you get so wise?“ she wonders, her voice thick with emotion.

„While I was sleeping, my dear.“

She just stares. „You just stole that from a movie, you know.“

„Did I?“ he offers her a playful smirk before he starts to laugh. She joins his laughter a second later and they both laugh until tears blur their vision.

And just like that everything’s back to normal. Back to a time Patrick Jane didn’t even know he was missing until he got it back.

_Now it’s his turn to set things right._

**.**

**.**


End file.
